This "almost daily" account of my life here quickly turned into a "once a weekly" account. I do much more than is noted here, honestly I do, but most of it is not blog-friendly.
Yesterday there was rain in Lima. For those of you unfamilar with the terrain, Lima is a desert, even though it is on the ocean. There was quite a commotion about the rain, which we would more appropriately call a drizzle. Drizzle or not, it was a enough to put a damper on today's plan to go to the beach. Once again, my plans to go swimming have fizzled out.
Instead I went with another volunteer, Ruth, to Huaca Pucllana ( pronounced wha-ka pook-li-a-na), The Sacred Playground. This former temple site was built by people of the Lima culture, who flourished between 100-600 AD. This temple was dedicated to Pachamama and Cochemama, goddesses of the earth and sea. Women and children were sacrificed here, so I am not sure why this place was called a "playground". Our loquacious tour guide told us that this site only became an archeological area 30 years ago. Before that it is was just a hill of dirt and he he used to ride his bike on it as a kid. Skeletons are continually being uncovered. The sacrificial victims were usually decapitated and quartered, while the priests were left intake. Huaca Pucllana is located in the middle of Miraflores, as you can see in photo #2. It is built of hand-made bricks, many of which are marked with thumprints of the workers from 1500 years ago ( photo #1). The Lima people constructed the brick walls in irregular layers, with spaces between each brick. A few years ago, the archeologists, seeing this irregularity, decided to "improve" the buildings for reconstruction and made uniform bricks and walls. Last year a 7.9 earthquake hit Lima. All the reconstructed walls collapsed, but the originals remained intact. Apparently the the Limas knew what they were doing.
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